


Dignify Our Feast

by reginalds



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Lots of indulgent writing about food, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26640889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginalds/pseuds/reginalds
Summary: In mid-April, as the trees outside start to bud and bloom, she runs into Joe and Nicky in the kitchen just before sunrise.Joe is sitting cross-legged on the counter, his hair wild and his eyes half-closed, eating a large bowl of oatmeal with one eye on the clock, and the other on Nicky, who is singing something in what sounds like Latin as he pulls things from the pantry. She cracks eggs into a pan, yawning.Joe ducks out of the kitchen before Nile is done scrambling her eggs to pray Fajr, placing a lingering kiss on Nicky’s mouth, and a swift one on Nile’s forehead as he goes, and when Nile’s food is done she takes a plate to the table and watches Nicky work.
Relationships: Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova & Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 50
Kudos: 297





	1. Lamb Biryani

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a bit of a terrible time, but this brilliant fandom and this brilliant movie and these brilliant characters have been a much needed bright spot, and I'm excited to share this story about food and family. 
> 
> I did want to note that I'm a Jewish Latina, so if I got anything wrong in this story please let me know: I will edit & learn! 
> 
> Title from "Inviting a Friend to Supper" by Ben Jonson.

_Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I_   
_Do equally desire your company;_   
_Not that we think us worthy such a guest,_   
_But that your worth will dignify our feast._

Ben Jonson

They find themselves in Italy in the spring, in a safe house in Rome: a small apartment tucked away in Trastevere with defensible windows, thick walls, and a couple of bedrooms.

It’s mostly Nile and Joe and Nicky. Andy stays with them for week as a shallow stab wound from a previous mission heals before she disappears, seeking space in mortality. They’re still careful not to discuss Booker, two years into his exile.

Nile spends her time exploring Rome, falling in love with the city a neighborhood at a time, sometimes with Joe and Nicky, and sometimes on her own. They’re planning to lay low for a few months, and she pulls the city over her shoulders and into her heart like a new jacket, and she buys herself one of those, too, an expensive leather one, thanks to the intricate tangle of bank accounts they've given her access to.

She spends a series of afternoons wandering reverently through the Villa Borghese, breaks a man’s fingers on the Spanish Steps for trying to pick a tourist’s pocket, and flings a euro over her shoulder into the Trevi Fountain when Joe hands her a coin with a knowing grin. 

Nicky buys them tickets to visit the Vatican when she asks, and they dress to impress: he puts on a suit she didn’t know he owned, which is tight across his shoulders and his ass and makes Joe walk straight into a door frame. When Nicky kisses him goodbye, petting at the fading red mark on his forehead, Nile has to wrench him out of the apartment as Joe threatens to drag him back into their bedroom.

They move quietly through the rooms in the Vatican, turning their heads to avoid being captured on the security cameras, and when they reach the Sistine Chapel Nicky stands firm and tall, and lets her lean against him as she tips her head back to stare at the ceiling.

“Joe hated Michelangelo,” Nicky says conversationally, as they walk back into the crowded city, subdued by the splendor. The painted ceilings and opulence had made Nile feel small, instead of reverent, and it’s the most perfect thing he could have said.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” she says with feeling, and he laughs, wide and bright at her shoulder. “Sometimes I forget how old you guys are.”

She loses Nicky to Joe when they make it back to their apartment, and she changes into more comfortable clothes and slips back into the city, leaving them to themselves.

She’s settling into this immortality thing on her own terms, learning where she fits into her new family, and riding the sting of losing her old family as it comes in waves. Some days are more difficult than others, but she’s in Italy in the springtime, and Rome is beautiful.

She takes up running, discovering the city through long loops across the Seven Hills, as Frank Ocean croons in her earbuds. She runs across traffic, fearless and lithe, shouts at mopeds in 14th century Italian she’s picked up from Nicky as they swerve into her path, and she breathes and settles into living without end.

+

In mid-April, as the trees outside start to bud and bloom, she runs into Joe and Nicky in the kitchen just before sunrise.

Joe is sitting cross-legged on the counter, his hair wild and his eyes half-closed, eating a large bowl of oatmeal with one eye on the clock, and the other on Nicky, who is singing something in what sounds like Latin as he pulls things from the pantry. She cracks eggs into a pan, yawning.

Joe ducks out of the kitchen before Nile is done scrambling her eggs to pray Fajr, placing a lingering kiss on Nicky’s mouth, and a swift one on Nile’s forehead as he goes, and when Nile’s food is done she takes a plate to the table and watches Nicky work.

He’s grinding fresh spices in a small mortar and pestle – coriander and cloves and cardamom – and gives her a gentle grin when she sniffs curiously at the air, and tips a tiny pile of ground spice on her plate to try. She licks her finger to taste it, laughing at the way the sharpness makes her sneeze.

She rinses her plate and sets a fresh pot of coffee to brew while Nicky minces garlic and slices chilis and chiffonades handfuls of mint and cilantro. When she offers to help he hands her onions and tomatoes and a knife, and he mixes the small mounds of ground spices with his minced garlic and herbs, her diced onions and tomatoes, and a large pot of yoghurt, then pulls a rack of lamb wrapped in butcher’s paper from the fridge and slathers it with the marinade.

“Biryani,” he tells Nile, when she brings him a cup of fresh coffee and a question. “For iftar.” He blows on the coffee and smiles. “It’s Joe’s favorite. We had it in Hyderabad, in….” He pauses, and looks at the ceiling, then bites his lip, and shrugs. “A long time ago.”

“I’ve never had biryani,” she tells him. “But I like Indian food.” 

“It’ll be ready at sundown,” he tells her. “I think you’ll like it.” He covers the bowl full of marinated lamb with a towel, and Nile stands up to help him clean the dishes and the kitchen with military precision, scrubbing at a spot on the stove until it shines.

+

As the sun rises in the sky, Joe takes everyone’s weapons and lays them out on the rug in front of the TV, and sets himself up with a whetstone to sharpen everything by hand.

“By _hand_?” Nile asks, aghast, when she finds him. “Joe. There are machines that do that, I’m pretty sure.”

“They don’t work as well,” he tells her calmly. “Will you get me the bayonet from the umbrella stand? And the knife Andy gave you, if you want it sharpened.” He runs the whetstone down the edge of Nicky’s longsword with a flourish, and Nile fetches him the rifle with the bayonet attached with a sigh, nearly stepping on Nicky when she returns to the living room.

He’s squatting beside Joe, unloading a selection of weapons: another sword, what’s she’s pretty sure is a katana, three filigreed daggers and two heavy chef’s knives that he was using earlier that morning. Nile adds the bayonet to the pile of weaponry in front of Joe, and stands.

“Nile,” Nicky says, adding a final sword to the pile, a slim rapier with a shining hilt that looks like it’s inlaid with real gems. “I’m going to the market, do you want to come?”

“I hate this sword,” Joe says, picking up the rapier. “And the prince who gave it to you.”

“It’s a good sword,” Nicky says mildly. “Market, Nile?”

Nile hides her grin at Joe’s outraged muttering. “I’ll get my wallet.”

+

“Is it a good idea to leave your boyfriend with a large pile of weapons and a football game?” Nile asks as they walk down the stairs to street level.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Nicky says, and then: “I expect we’ll see when we get back.” He holds the door for her, and she rolls her eyes to make him laugh, and ducks through it.

+

Their safehouse has a courtyard and an orange tree, and there’s a cafe around the corner with handsome baristas and the best cornetti Nile has ever eaten.

Today, they stop at the café for sandwiches and espresso, which Nile is developing a taste for, and they sip and eat quietly until Nicky taps his foot against hers and murmurs: “That barista is looking at you,” and Nile nearly spills her coffee all over her new jacket.

“Shut up, he is not,” she hisses, angling her body so she can glance over his shoulders. “Which one?”

“The handsome one,” Nicky says, handing her a small pile of napkins.

“They’re both handsome,” Nile whispers, taking another furtive glance. “Be more specific.”

“The one with brown hair,” he says, turning to look while she tries to hide behind her sandwich. “Behind the till.”

“Don’t _look_ at him, come on,” Nile says, kicking him in the shin beneath the counter they’re standing at. “A good wingman is subtle, okay?”

Nicky hides his wide smile behind his tiny espresso cup, his eyes dancing with mirth over the ceramic rim. “Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll be a good wingman.”

The barista with the brown hair comes over to take their empty cups and saucers, and he’s even more handsome in person, with dark skin and loose curls. Nicky trails him to the till, fishing euro coins out of his pockets to pay for their coffee and sandwiches, murmuring in rapid-fire Italian that Nile is sure is going to lead to an embarrassing situation. But he just comes back with a receipt and follows her out of the cafe, letting her walk half a block before turning the receipt over and handing it to her, grinning when she stops in her tracks and stares at the hastily scrawled phone number scribbled on the flimsy paper.

“Oh my _god,_ ” she says. “Nicky, what did you tell him?”

“I was subtle,” he promises, taking her arm, “Come on, we’re going across the river.”

He leads her across the Ponte Garibaldi to a bustling market, and she trails him closely in the crowd, smiling helplessly as he fights cheerfully with each vendor over the price of everything he picks up – spinach, onions, a brown paper bag full of dates, cardamom pods and cinnamon sticks.

He fills two canvas bags with fresh produce for the week ahead and insists on carrying both, and when they walk past a church on their way back to the safe house: Nile notices Nicky notice it, his spine straightening a little, his shoulders tensing. She nudges him in the side, gently at first and then harder, finally digging her elbow into his ribs until he twists away, towards the church, biting down on his smile.

“Grazie,” he murmurs, and she follows him through the heavy, wooden door, letting a breath out slowly through her nose as they step into the silent darkness of the nave. It’s a modest space, but the ceiling is painted with cracked blue paint that seems to glow, and the pews are solidly built, dotted with small velvet cushions.

Nile dips her finger into a shallow marble bowl of holy water and crosses herself, then tucks a euro into the offering box, picking up a tea candle, and feels momentarily guilty when Nicky pulls a fifty euro note from his pocket and stuffs it in after her offering. He takes a candle too, and lights it solemnly, bowing his head over it for a long time, his lips moving soundlessly.

He crosses himself after he places the candle, and sits down in a pew near the back, folding his hands together. Nile closes her fist over the cross she still wears, bringing it to her lips as she prays for her dad and her mom and her brother, squeezes her eyes tight and imagines them safe and happy, and then wanders around the edges of the nave, peeking at the gold-painted altar, and the wooden statues of saints tucked into alcoves that line the walls.

Nicky finds her by a statue of the Virgin Mary, studying the tiny, mother of pearl tears on her cheeks. He loops his arm through hers and they step back into the sunshine, squinting.

“Who do you pray for?” She asks as they dodge around tourists on their way home.

“You,” he says, hip-checking her gently. “And Andy. Quynh. Joe. The families we have all left behind.” He sucks his teeth and looks away. “Booker.”

“Really?” She asks.

“He is our family,” he says simply. “I have always prayed that my family remains safe.” 

She nods, and wraps her arms around herself, frowning at the street ahead.

“Why do you pray for?” He asks her gently, and she sighs.

“My family, too. I pray for them to be safe and happy. To.” She takes a breath. “To forget me.”

He tightens his hand on her arm, squeezing tightly for a moment. He doesn’t say anything, and she appreciates him for that, and for the way he matches her stride for stride as she stomps down the street, maneuvering deftly around a group of students that spill boisterously into the street, silent and steady at her side.

“What if I call that barista and he doesn’t speak English?” She asks, when she’s mostly sure her voice won’t crack when she speaks.

“Hmm? Ah.” He shrugs. “I’ll translate for you.”

“Oh god,” she says. “ _No_.”

“Joe will translate for you,” he offers, his eyes twinkling.

“No,” she says firmly. “That would be worse.”

“He can be very romantic in Italian,” Nicky says, and laughs when she grimaces.

“Too much information,” she says, flapping a hand at him. “Please stop talking.”

+

They carry their purchases up the stairs and put them away quietly: in the living room, the weapons are sharpened and polished, and Joe is asleep on the couch with a book splayed open on his chest. Nicky watches him with the smile he reserves for Joe, the one that lurks at the corners of his mouth, and lifts his feet to make room on the couch to sit, plucking the book from his chest and opening it to where Joe left off. Joe rouses sleepily, and Nicky quiets him with a hand on his ankle and a word in Italian, and Nile goes into her own room to listen to music until the heavy, lonely feeling in her heart lightens.

+

Nicky knocks quietly on the door a few hours before sundown, and sticks his head into her bedroom. “I could use a hand with the biryani,” he says. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” Nile says, rolling to her feet. She grabs her phone from the bedside table and unplugs her headphones. “I call dibs on music selection.”

They work side by side in the kitchen as the rest of the biryani comes together, and Nile finds a playlist of Motown classics that makes Nicky smile. She slices onions and he browns them patiently, then cooks the meat in even more spices until the air in their apartment is thick with a savory, spicy smell.

Nile washes the rice, then adds milk and crumbles fine threads of saffron into it, stirring carefully under Nicky’s watchful eye.

He builds the biryani in a heavy, cast iron pot: layering rice and meat and onions, rice and meat and onions, then pats of butter. When it’s in the oven, they wash the dishes side by side, bumping elbows as Nile shimmies along with The Supremes.

Joe is in the living room when the kitchen is clean again, perched on a windowsill, watching the sun set slowly, drenching the room in a perfect orange light that mellows and fades gently.

The smells in the apartment deepen and sweeten, and when Nile’s stomach starts grumbling, as the last of the light fades out of the sky, she finds Nicky in the kitchen arranging a small handful of dates in a porcelain saucer.

She leans in when he pulls the biryani from the oven, tipping up the lid to peek at it, and inhaling deeply at the smell.

She helps him set the table as the biryani rests, and when the last edge of the sun sinks below the horizon he fills a large glass with cold water, and puts more water on to boil. Nile goes to fetch the candlesticks from the living room to spruce up the table, and when she gets back, Joe is in the kitchen, looking at Nicky like he hung the moon.

He’s drinking the glass of water slowly, and his curls are neatly oiled, and his feet are bare beneath a crisp kurta, and nudged against Nicky’s socked feet. The kettle whistles on the stove behind them, and Nile turns off the burner, watching Joe and Nicky out of the corner of her eye.

When Joe finishes his water, Nicky picks up a date from the saucer and feeds it to him gently, before handing him the whole plate and turning back to the stove.

He takes the kettle off the heat, and makes a small pot of thick, fragrant coffee with fluid, practiced motions, handing Nile three small, ceramic cups to add to the table after ladling coffee and sugar into each. 

Joe takes a deep sip of coffee, then presses a kiss to Nicky’s cheek, ducking out of the kitchen into the bedroom he shares with Nicky to pray Maghrib. His low, sweet voice echoes through the small safe house and Nile washes his saucer quickly, then leans against the counter, watching Nicky adjust the silverware on the table, mouthing along with the prayer Joe is singing.

“It’s biryani, right?” Joe asks, when he steps back into the kitchen. He reaches for the lid of the pot and laughs when Nicky shoos him to the table. “Lamb biryani?”

“Sit down and I’ll tell you,” Nicky says, and Nile follows Joe to the table, both watching as Nicky carries the pot to the table and takes off the lid, leaning over it with a frown.

Joe, predictably, puts a fond hand on Nicky’s waist, dipping his fingers beneath the hem of his shirt. “I think I did it well this time,” Nicky says, picking up a spoon and prodding dubiously at the onions.

“Let me taste it, habibi,” Joe says. “Come on, it smells so good.”

“Maybe I should have marinated the lamb overnight,” Nicky says.

“If you don’t serve us some right now, I’m going to stab you with my spoon,” Joe says cheerfully. “Nile will hold you down, and we’ll eat it all ourselves.”

“Don’t drag me into this,” Nile says, tipping her chair onto its back legs with a grin.

“The spice might not be right,” Nicky warns them, and Joe scoffs, tugging the serving spoon from Nicky’s hand and standing to serve them all generous portions.

“Sit down,” he tells Nicky when their plates have been filled, picking up his fork and using the tines to shred the lamb meat. “It’s perfect, look how tender it is. Sit down. Here, next to me.”

Nicky sighs and sits, pressing his shoulder to Joe’s as he takes one bite, and then another and another.

“Habibi, it’s perfect,” Joe tells him softly. “You did it perfectly.”

“I hate that I’m going to be the third wheel for eternity,” Nile says, rolling her eyes at them. She picks up her fork to take a bite. “Oh, holy shit, Nicky.”

“You see?” Joe says. “Nicky. It’s perfect.”

“It’s fine,” Nicky says, biting down on a smile.

“What did you two do today when you went to the market?” Joe asks, leaning over his plate, and further into Nicky’s space.

“Nicky fought everyone in sight,” Nile says promptly, and Nicky laughs. “He was ready to fistfight this little old lady selling onions.”

“I haggled with her,” Nicky corrects her. “For a fair price. Five euro for a bag of onions is too much.”

Joe laughs, and Nile joins in, shaking her head.

“Nile, did you text your handsome barista?” Nicky asks, his eyebrows raised, and his eyes full of mischief. 

“You met a handsome barista?” Joe asks with his mouth full, one cheek full of biryani, and his eyes dancing. “Was he as handsome as Nicky?”

“No one’s as handsome as Nicky,” Nile says dutifully with an eye roll, and Joe nods, tipping his fork in her direction in a salute.

“He doesn’t speak English,” Nicky tells Joe. “We have to romance him for Nile.”

“That is one hundred percent not happening,” Nile says. “And we don’t know if he doesn’t speak English.”

“I can be very romantic in Italian,” Joe says, and she groans. “What does he look like?”

Nile pushes her plate at the two of them. “Give me some more biryani and I’ll tell you.”


	2. Thanksgiving Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That night, while she sits on a counter and watches Nicky make dinner – a stew, something hearty with tomatoes and white beans, and onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil until the whole house smells like it – Nile looks at the calendar on her phone and realizes that it’s nearly Thanksgiving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had meant to get this written, edited, and posted by Thanksgiving, but life and the world got in the way. So this is a little belated, but I hope you enjoy it. I'm grateful for the warm and deeply kind response to the first chapter, thank you for reading! x

The start of fall finds them in Venezuela, sweating in Caracas, and then on the run through the Guiana Highlands, following a tip from Copley. They move through some of the most beautiful landscape Nile has ever seen – tabletop mesas rising proud from the clouds, and verdant rainforest – at a ruthless, breakneck pace: stealing cars, commandeering tiny airplanes, and hacking their way through the jungle on foot.

Joe slips and breaks his ankle one morning, and they have barely enough time to wait for it to set before pushing forward. At night, they sleep in two-hour shifts, startling awake to occasional bursts of gunfire.

It’s hot and humid and dangerous: Nile falls asleep with her cross tucked into a damp palm, praying for good dreams. They’re after a group of narcotraficantes who have been kidnapping groups of kids, and when they find them, in a shitty, concrete bunker in what feels like the middle of the rainforest, everything descends into chaos and gunfire.

Nicky, observing the leaders of the cartel a week earlier through the scope of his sniper rifle, had gritted his teeth. “Some real bad motherfuckers,” he’d said, and Joe had pressed a broad hand against his thigh and murmured something that sounded like a prayer in Arabic that made him smile.

Nile remembers that moment, tries to stamp it across her brain as she runs after Andy, covering her as they break into the bunker and take out a wave of soldiers who look like teenagers. When they find the leader of the cartel, he’s got a terrible, manic smile, and a shotgun, and they pull a Leipzig ’71, where Andy puts her hands up and ejects the magazine from her gun, and Nile shoots the man between the eyes before he realizes that she’s armed, too.

Andy frisks the man where he falls, and Nile shoves a hard drive into her backpack, before cringing at the echo of an explosion from somewhere outside that she can feel in her teeth.

“That’s the signal,” Andy says, eerily calm, “we gotta go.”

Half the building is engulfed in flames – Nile only recognizes Joe through the smoke because of the shadowy curve of the scimitar on his back – and the rest of it blows as she clears the doorway. The blast knocks her off her feet, and she angles her body as best she can towards Andy: covering both their heads and pressing them into the ground as shards of glass and chunks of concrete rain down around them.

Nicky’s there before she can even catch her breath, pulling her up and then catching her as someone gets off a lucky shot that sinks into her thigh and she screams and nearly falls. He twists, efficient and terrifying, and fires once, then pulls her arm over his shoulder.

“We have to run, Nile,” he says. “Into the jungle, okay? Copley said there’s a town half a day from here where he can arrange a helicopter for us. It’s not far, come on.”

And they go. Nile presses her lips together and follows as best as she can, trying to not think about the sounds and the fire they leave behind.

It’s brutal, and she ends up limping for half a day, because the constant motion and adrenaline means the bullet takes ages to work its way out of her hamstring. She feels shredded from the inside out by the time they make it onto the helicopter Copley set up for them, and then from the helicopter to a tiny airport on the outskirts of Cartagena, to a slightly larger airport in Tegucigalpa, to a private jet in Mexico City, and finally, to Ottawa, of all places.

“What the hell,” she mutters, leaning heavily against Nicky as they step out of a car stolen from the long-term parking lot at the airport. He shrugs.

“I hate the cold,” Joe announces, as they wander through the safe house Copley had secured for them. It’s got two floors and three bedrooms; tall ceilings and wide windows with heavy curtains. It’s cold, even indoors with the heat on, and Nile shoves her hands into the pocket of the stolen jacket she’s wearing (stolen mostly to hide the bloodstains on her shirt) and pretends that the sound of the heaters rattling doesn’t remind her of winters in Chicago with her mom and brother.

The fridge is stocked, at least, and Nicky hums with approval after examining it. There are fresh linens in a closet, and warm quilts, and Andy finds a closet piled with nondescript clothing and cold winter gear, and a small box of toiletries.

Nile drops her backpack in one of the rooms and picks up a change of clothes. There’s blood in her hair, she’s sure of it, and when she looks herself over in the bathroom mirror she finds it in her eyebrows, too. She strips, shoves her stained clothes in the trash can and sits on the closed lid of the toilet while she unbraids her hair, closing her eyes so she doesn’t have to see the way the dried blood flakes out of it.

She scrubs herself off in the shower until her skin stings, and then does it again. When she’s dressed, and clean, she finds Joe and Nicky in the kitchen, drinking hot chocolate made with milk and rich cocoa powder. Joe’s hair is dripping onto his shoulders, and when he sees her he tugs an empty chair in front of him and pats it.

Nicky hands her a mug of hot chocolate, and Nile sits in front of Joe, bowing her head to sip her drink, and to let him divide her hair into sections with gentle fingers. He pulls a little when he starts to braid, and she finally feels the tension in her back start to ease, for the first time in days.

“I really hate the cold,” Joe tells her, as he tugs – gentle, but firm – and twists her hair. “I froze to death once in the Atacama desert. I’m not made for this kind of weather.”

“You froze to death in a desert?” Nile asks.

“A cold desert,” Joe says. “We were up high in the mountains, waiting to ambush a military convoy.”

“It was July,” Nicky says, joining them at the table with a bag of marshmallows and the tiny smile Nile was starting to recognize as the one that meant he was full of shit. “It wasn’t that cold.”

“We were in the Southern hemisphere! At altitude!” Joe says, and Nicky looks at him with his big, guileless eyes.

“It wasn’t too cold,” he tells Nile again, ignoring Joe’s loud scoff. “And anyway,” he says, turning to his husband. “It could be worse. It could be Nunavut.”

“God is great,” Joe says solemnly, then grins, letting go of Nile’s hair to elbow Nicky and gesture for the bag of marshmallows. “Give me some of those.”

+

They have a week of bad days as they get settled in Ottawa. Nile’s leg is finally healed, but it aches in the cold all the same. Every time she closes her eyes she can hear the horrible, sucking sounds of the flames and the explosion, and she scrubs her hands until they’re raw, trying to get the smell of burning jungle out from under her nails.

On the third night, Andy and Joe nearly come to blows when they discover that Andy’s been hiding a shallow, inexpertly bandaged gash along her ribs. Joe disinfects her wound, and sews her stitches with quick, steady hands and a fierce diatribe in a language Nile doesn’t recognize.

Andy disappears from the safe house after dinner, and when Nile can’t sleep for the third night in a row she tugs open a window in the kitchen, tugs on the fire escape ladder until she’s sure it’ll hold her weight, and then pulls herself out of the window and up onto the flat roof, taking shallow gulps of cold air.

She greets the dawn with her head tucked between her knees, dizzy from lack of sleep, and too exhausted to cry, and Nicky finds her just before the tips of her fingers go completely numb, carrying two coffee cups and a coat that he tucks over her shoulders. He sits beside her until their coffee is gone and then he stands, stretches, and pulls her to her feet and into a quick embrace.

“I’m kind of a wreck,” she mutters, pretending she’s not wiping her nose on the shoulder of the soft sweater he’s wearing.

“Be patient with yourself,” he says, rubbing at her back. “It is not always so bad as that.”

“No?”

“Sometimes it’s worse,” he tells her honestly, guiding her gently to the edge of the roof. “But not always. And always we will be there for you.”

Nile huffs, and shoves her arms into the sleeves of the jacket he brought her so she can climb back down the fire escape. “That’s a hell of a promise, Nicky,” she says.

“And not one I make lightly,” he agrees, and she sighs and swings herself back into the kitchen, where Joe is waiting with more coffee and a weary smile.

That night, while she sits on a counter and watches Nicky make dinner – a stew, something hearty with tomatoes and white beans, and onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil until the whole house smells like it – Nile looks at the calendar on her phone and realizes that it’s nearly Thanksgiving.

She burns herself on the stove when Nicky asks her to help, and hisses, sucking on her finger until the pinch of pain from the burn subsides. Nicky doesn’t ask, because he’s good about things like that, but he watches her as they eat dinner, and then after as they gather in the living room and watch something on TV that’s dubbed in an accented French that Nile can barely understand.

He doesn’t ask her until the next morning. She’d thought about it all night, as she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. If she closes her eyes all she can see is her mama’s kitchen, which is an improvement from the nightmares she was having about the bloody mission back in Venezuela, but still painful.

In the morning, over coffee and eggs that Joe baked with more tomatoes and onions and a dash of pepper that makes her taste buds sing, Nile runs a finger around and around the rim of her mug, and then opens and closes her mouth.

“Nile?” Nicky asks.

“I think I want to celebrate Thanksgiving,” Nile says. “Do you. Could we celebrate Thanksgiving?” Nicky looks over at Joe, and Nile forces herself to look away from the sympathy on their faces.

“It’s stupid,” Nile says, quickly. “The whole tradition is stupid, it’s steeped in blood and violence, but it’s also…” She shrugs. “It’s one of the only times of year that my whole family sat together around a table and shared a meal. My mom, she would cook so much food, even when it was just the three of us. We’d eat and watch the game, and listen to music, and it’s. It’s just. Nice.”

“Of course, Nile,” Nicky says. “Of course we can celebrate.”

“I know we didn’t do it last year,” Nile says. “Or the year before that? I don’t know why it feels important this year.”

“We have forgotten more holidays than we celebrate,” Nicky says simply. “But it is nice to have traditions. Especially at this time of year, in the cold.”

Joe shivers, for effect, and Nile laughs grudgingly. “Okay,” she says, chewing on her lips. “Thank you.”

“Nile, of course,” Nicky says, and when she doesn’t say anything, he rises to clear the dishes, and nudges Joe until he does the same. Alone at the table, Nile tugs her phone out of her pocket and spends a while scrolling back through her emails and texts with Copley, trying to remember where they were in November of last year.

Kyiv, it turns out. Springing political prisoners from cramped and miserable Ukrainian prisons. It was colder than it is in Ottawa, and Joe had gotten himself captured, and for the ninety-six hours they hadn’t had eyes on him, Nile and Andy had had to take turns talking Nicky down.

They’d been on the run on Thanksgiving Day, according to the terse texts she’d exchanged with Copley on the date. Andy had nearly gotten shot, and the bullet Nile had taken for her had burned as it worked its way out of her skin.

Shivering, Nile tucks her phone away, and takes a cup of spiced coffee up to the roof where she sits with her fingers wrapped tight around it and stares out across the city. 

+

Nile sleeps that night, for the first time in what feels like a month. In the morning, she wakes up bright and early and goes for a run. It snowed overnight and everything is frosted and gleaming in the sun. She puts her headphones on and chooses an old album, something classic, something she used to listen to with her brother, and then she runs until she can barely feel her legs.

She goes shopping with Joe and Nicky in the afternoon, trawling through the racks at a cavernous vintage shop to replace what got shot up and left behind in Venezuela. She finds two warm sweaters to combat the Canadian winter, a pair of jeans that make her ass look great, and a pair of sturdy boots made of supple leather that hug her ankles like she’s owned them for years.

Joe finds her a bomber jacket in the midst of a pile of coats, made with gold velvet cloth that looks burnished in the low lights at the back of the store. It fits tight and warm around her shoulders and makes Nicky smile at her when he catches her admiring herself in the mirror.

“It looks good,” he tells her, “you look like a Klimt painting.” She grins, and twirls a little.

They get lunch in the city center: enormous, steaming bowls of pho from a tiny place where Joe places their order in Vietnamese and they bicker over the bottle of sriracha and who gets the last handful of Thai basil. (Nile does, but only after Nicky steals it out from beneath Joe’s hand, and tosses it to her across the plastic table they’re crowded at.)

When they get back to the safe house, still arguing idly, they start planning for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a nice way to spend the time, sprawled across the living room with Joe taking notes with a nub of charcoal, and Nicky and Nile passing a laptop from hand to hand, comparing recipes.

Something settles over them, in that living room, that makes Nile feel safe. She didn’t feel safe for a long time when she joined Andy and Joe and Nicky, between the dreams, and the phantom aches from bullet wounds that had healed just hours before, but she recognizes that she’s starting to get used to this itinerant life, and the oases of peace and quiet, in between the jagged edges of conflict and battle and mission, are starting to feel precious. Starting to feel safe.

They order pizza for dinner, and then drift apart as the night wears on, and everyone gets tired. Nile showers and goes to bed when the planning starts to grate on her nerves, and lies in bed with her headphones around her neck and stares at the ceiling.

She can’t help but remember the way they used to celebrate in the tiny apartment she grew up in. The big turkey bought half off at Costco, the cans of cranberry sauce, the mac ‘n cheese that melted just so. It wasn’t the most beautiful food, but there was always plenty of it, and they blasted music while they made it, and danced and laughed, and told stories about the time her dad burnt the pie so badly the crust flaked off like charcoal.

By this point in her life-after-life, Nile has died dozens of times. She's been knifed in the thigh and the gut and the back. She’s been shot, and hit by a car, and once, deeply unpleasantly, garroted, before Andy came to her rescue. She plunged over a dozen stories onto a parked car in London, breaking all the bones in her body and then some.

And yet. Nothing aches quite as deeply as this does: imagining her mom and brother in their little kitchen, trying to fill the space she left the way they all had when her dad passed. She wonders if they have the photo of her in her dress blues at graduation, beside the photos of her dad they keep on the fridge and the mantel and the coffee table.

She drifts off to sleep, and when she wakes up, far too early to get out of bed, she unplugs her phone from where its charging and types her address into Google Maps, and then the address of their safe house. She holds her breath and clicks through the directions by car, by plane, by train, by foot. Chicago is twelve hours by car, two days by trains through upstate New York then Ohio then back up through Indiana. It’s a four hour plane ride. _Four hours_. She could be on her mom’s doorstep in four hours. It would take over two hundred hours for her to walk home, she reads, and laughs a little wetly, and puts her phone down. Two hundred hours. She could do it, if she really wanted. She has all the time in the world.

Instead, she chews at her lip until it bleeds and gets dressed and joins Joe and Nicky in the kitchen.

Joe makes them thick, spiced coffee and eggs with cumin and pepper, and teases Nicky gently in Arabic while Nicky reads headlines out of the newspaper in French. Andy stamps into the house while they’re finishing their eggs, kicking snow off her boots, and when Nicky disappears to talk to her, Nile nudges Joe under the table.

“I think I want to talk to Booker,” she says, quietly. Joe’s mouth pinches, immediately, and she sighs. “I know. _I know_. It’s just…” she sighs, puts down her coffee to pick up her fork, then picks up her coffee again. “Joe, I miss my family too much, and I can’t talk to _anyone_ about it. You’re all too old to remember what it feels like, and that’s no one’s fault, but… Joe. Booker _remembers_.”

“Booker remembers too much,” Joe says, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Nile.”

“Joe, if I don’t talk to somebody I’m going to get on a plane and blow our cover just for the chance to hug my mom again.” She says, and then bites at her lip, where she’d spent all night chewing it.

Across the table, Joe breaths out. “Nile,” he starts, and she covers her face with her hands so she doesn’t have to look at his face, creased with sympathy. “ _Habibti_ ,” Joe says softly, and scoots his chair forward until he can nudge their knees together. “I think Copley has contact information for Booker,” he says, finally. “You should text him.”

“I won’t if you don’t want me to,” Nile says, pulling back far enough that she can look him in the eyes. “I wouldn’t, Joe.”

“No, no,” he says, rubbing at his forehead with two fingers and abruptly looking older and more tired than she’s ever seen him look. “You should talk to him. It’s not fair to you to only have the three of us. You and Booker, you’re both so young.”

“He’s two hundred years old,” Nile says, rolling her eyes.

“Nicky and I have been alive for almost a thousand years, and Andy far longer than that.” Joe says. “You know what I mean. And I think…” he sighs. “I think it would be good for Booker to talk about it. We never did.”

“Never?” Nile asks, frowning. “Not once?”

“We did at first, but it was too… too raw. Too painful. I think we thought it wouldn’t do him any help to ask, so we didn’t.”

“We should have,” Nicky says, and both Nile and Joe jump. He’s standing in the doorway, holding an empty mug in one hand, and smiling gently at the two of them. “You should speak to him, Nile,” Nicky says encouragingly. “If you think it will help.”

“And if you don’t mind,” Nile says. “I’m serious, if you don’t want me to…”

“He is our family,” Nicky says. “And nothing in constant in this life or death except our family. You should talk to him, Nile.”

“Do you think you’ll forgive him?” Nile asks, looking down at her fingers and twirling the end of her braid around it. “In a hundred years, do you think you’ll forgive him?”

“Yes,” Nicky says, immediate and sure. Nile twists to look at Joe, and he nods, even though his jaw is set.

“We will forgive him, but it may take longer to forget,” Joe says, and shrugs.

Nile tugs at her braid again, and watches as Nicky collects their mugs and deposits them in the sinks, clicking his tongue gently at the state of the kitchen counter, where Joe had spilled spices and splattered oil in his enthusiasm. She rolls her question around her tongue for a moment, then takes a breath, and asks it.

“Did you ever go back to your families? After you died?”

“I never did,” Nicky says, shaking his head. “We went back to Genova a century after I left and much had changed. None of my family was left.”

“I wanted to go back,” Joe says, one corner of his mouth ticking up with mischief. “But I was followed across the desert by a mad, blue-eyed soldier who killed me in my sleep.”

“That was _once–,”_ Nicky starts, with a long-suffering air, and Joe talks over him loudly, his eyes shining.

“He slid his sword between my ribs,” Joe says, clapping a hand to his chest dramatically as if he’d been stabbed. “I must say, Nicolo, I much preferred when we began traveling together and you slid your –.”

“Too much _information_ ,” Nile yelps, covering her ears while Joe laughs, and Nicky shakes his head, his ears turning pink. “I’m leaving,” she tells them loudly, shoving her chair back. “Please never tell me that story again.”

+

The day after she speaks to Joe, Nile opens up her text thread with Copley, takes a breath and sends a stream of messages:

 _Hi_ , she types, then cringes. _Do you have a phone number for Booker? Thanks!_

She stares at the exclamation point and grimaces, then picks up her phone again. _Oh, kind of unrelated but._ She writes _. Do you know where I could buy a turkey near us in Canada?_

Copley, who is mercifully used to them by now, texts back with a phone number, and an address to the nearest Costco, out in Gatineau.

 _Thanks_ , she sends back with a smiley face. _You’re a lifesaver_.

 _Anytime_ , he sends. _Is everything alright?_

 _Fine,_ she types, then stares at the word, and deletes it. _It’s okay_ , she writes. _Holidays are hard_.

He takes a while to respond to that, and she watches the bubbles indicating that he’s typing pop up and disappear and then pop up again. _I remember Christmas being a difficult time, after my wife passed. If you need anything I’m just a phone call away._

 _I appreciate_ _that_ , she sends him, smiling at her phone. _I’ll call if I need to._

It takes her a little while to work up the courage to actually make the call to Booker, but she finally does later that afternoon, listens to the phone ring, and bites her nails.

“ _Oui?_ ” Booker says, when he picks up, and his voice is rough, tired.

“This was a bad idea,” Nile says, and hangs up.

+

He texts her five hours later, when she’s trying to sleep, and she jumps each time her phone vibrates.

 _Nile_ The first text says, then there’s a question mark, and the third text is just an emoji of a hand waving.

“What the _fuck_ ,” she says, staring at the emoji, and then she startles all over again when there’s a soft tap on the wall.

“Nile?” Nicky calls, muffled by the wall between their rooms. “Are you alright?”

“I thought we were pretending the walls were soundproof.” Nile calls back. “I’m fine.”

“The walls aren’t soundproof?” She can hear Joe ask, and Nicky’s murmured reply, and she gets out of bed, her heart racing with nervous energy.

She paces rapidly across her bedroom, from the door to the bed and then back, then tugs on a pair of sweatpants, thick socks, and a sweater. She wraps a scarf around her neck and head, shoves her feet into boots and pulls on a jacket, before lifting the window in the kitchen, and climbing out of the apartment onto the fire escape, and then to the roof.

It’s wickedly cold on the roof, but she hunches into her clothing, and dials clumsily, tucking herself against one of the skylights, where she’s mostly out of the wind.

Booker answers on the first ring this time. “Nile?” He asks, “Is everything okay? Is everyone – Andy’s –?”

“Oh, shit,” she says, her stomach dropping, “ _yeah,_ Booker, everyone’s fine. Andy’s fine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t think… sorry.”

“No,” he says, “it’s fine. I’m… it’s fine.” It definitely does not sound fine, and she sighs, tucking her head to her knees for warmth.

“Actually,” she says finally, inhaling a bracing gulp of cold air, and determining to soldier on, “actually, I called to ask about your family.”

There’s a long silence on the other end. “My family,” Booker says, his accent a little stronger on the second syllable of the word.

“It’s almost Thanksgiving,” Nile says. “My mom thinks I’m dead and is preparing to celebrate alone, and I…” she sighs. “I just wanted to know what you did, when you… without your family.”

“I did terrible things,” Booker says, after a moment’s hesitation. “I was cruel, and difficult. I threw a knife at Joe.”

Nile blinks. “Did you… hit him?” She asks, for lack of anything better to say, and the connection fuzzes out for a second as Booker laughs into the receiver.

“No,” he says. “Not that time. Instead, I left the country. I left the continent. I went to the New World. And Joe…,” he clears his throat, and she closes her eyes. “Joe found me. He found me in California, and he drank with me until we couldn’t walk, and then we danced.”

“You… danced,” Nile repeats.

“It was a tradition, for a little while,” Booker says. “Every few years, Joe and Nicky would find me at Christmas.”

“What would you do?” Nile asks, a grin tugging at her cold cheeks.

“We got in bar fights, most years. We played cards. We drank, a lot. We got very lost in Eastern Europe and nearly froze to death, until we found a small village and danced in a square around a bonfire all night. We learned all the folk dances, and shared a feast. In Georgia, I think.”

Nile smiles, against the cold. “That sounds nice.”

“It was,” he tells her. “Every time Joe and Nicky were there, or Andy was there, it was… Nice. It was better. If you’re still with them, Nile, you should spend the holiday with them. You shouldn’t be on your own.”

As if he’s been summoned by Booker’s words, Joe pokes his head over the edge of the roof, red cheeked from the wind and bundled up in a sweater she’s pretty sure is Nicky’s. He squints, and scans the roof, then nods when she raises a hand to wave at him.

“I’m not on my own,” she tells Booker, and smiles at Joe when pulls a blanket from around his shoulders and wraps it around hers.

“Good,” Booker says, quietly.

“I should probably go,” Nile says, and Joe’s face does something complicated as he looks at her, seeming to realize who she’s talking to. “Thanks.”

“ _À bientôt_ ,” Booker says, and hangs up.

Joe doesn’t say anything when they’re back in the house, just helps her unwrap all her layers, and then makes them both hot chocolate while she spins her phone between numb fingers. The mug he hands her is more marshmallow than cocoa, which makes her laugh, and he gives her a one-armed hug when they both step back towards their rooms.

“He seems okay,” Nile says quickly, before Joe can turn away with his cocoa. He nods, and lets a short, sharp breath out through his nose, then disappears into the room he’s sharing with Nicky.

+

The day after she talks with Booker, they drive out to the Costco in Gatineau with an extensive shopping list. Joe pushes a shopping cart through the store and waits patiently while Nicky and Nile bicker over produce and cheese.

Nicky isn’t particular about a lot of things – his clothes, where he sleeps, the music they listen to – but there are some things that he’s a real pain in the ass about – his guns, his longsword, and cheese.

“ _No_ ,” she tells him firmly, for the third time, picking the gruyere out of the shopping cart, and putting it back on its shelf, with force. “Nicky. It has to be Velveeta. And I know you think that’s wrong, because you knew the guy who invented mozzarella, or _whatever_ , but you’re _wrong_. It _has_ to be Velveeta. It’s mac and cheese, okay? It _has_ to be Velveeta _._ ”

Nicky opens his mouth to argue, and she growls at him. “I will _stab_ you,” she hisses, and Joe nudges the cart forward, bumping it gently against Nicky’s hip, who looks back at him, and then at Nile’s furious face, and relents.

“Fine.” He says. “But I get to pick the wine.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Nile says. “But I get to make the yams with marshmallows you turned your nose up at earlier.”

“Yams with marshmallows?” Joe asks, and Nile rounds on him, glaring.

“Don’t make fun of my culture.” She tells him.

“We’re respectfully disagreeing with your culture,” Joe says amiably, pushing the cart onwards through the aisles. “Your culture is strange.”

“ _Your_ culture is strange,” Nile mutters mutinously, and then a weird, KidsBop version of Hotline Bling starts playing over the supermarket speakers, and she marches on in her search for canned pumpkin, well aware she doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

+

They set aside two full days for cooking, and it’s weird, Nile thinks, when she wakes up and makes coffee. She hasn’t been shot at for over a month now, hasn’t died in two.

“It’s so quiet,” she tells Joe when he wanders in for breakfast. 

“It’s quiet sometimes,” Joe says, tasting his coffee, and then reaching over her to add yet another spoonful of sugar. “We don’t spend all our time fighting.”

“But we spend _a lot_ of time fighting,” Nile says.

“Sure,” he says easily. “But we spend a lot of time living, too. 900 years is a long time, you know. We’ve had years, decades, when we didn’t pick up a weapon, didn’t enter a war zone. Nicky went to school. I had a garden.” He blows on his coffee, and smiles. “Once we celebrated Christmas with Booker in Georgia.”

Across the table, Nicky looks up from the paper. “I remember that,” he says. “You were very drunk. We danced, and you tried to undress me in the village square.”

“You were very handsome,” Joe says, easily. He stretches his arms above his head, relentlessly, unfathomably comfortable in his body, and his desires. “Booker was not handsome, but it was nice to see him smile.”

“No flirting,” Nile tells him, standing up for more coffee. “We have work to do.”

“Where do we start?” Joe asks, holding his mug out.

“Nicky has the Excel sheet,” Nile says, picking up her phone. “Hang on, there’s one more thing we need.” She scrolls for a minute, and then selects the album she used to blast with her brother when they were on cooking duty in her mom’s kitchen. She grins at the first notes of Low End Theory, and then picks her phone up again.

“Wait, wait,” she says. “This one’s the best.” She scrolls again, picks a song, and grins, wide and helpless, at the low bass rasp of [her favorite song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9oTCzWRuvQ). Joe raises an eyebrow at the first snare hit, and he grins when Phife starts rapping. Nile mirrors his smile, and closes her eyes for a minute against the rush of memories.

She knows all the words because her brother knew all the words, and he knew all the words because all his friends knew all the words, and he played Tribe albums when they were kids, and then again on every holiday, blasting the music through the kitchen because it was the only thing they could all agree on.

“Okay,” she says, nodding. The music is in her mind, and she can feel it in her body, in the way she can’t keep her shoulders or her hips or her feet still. It feels like Thanksgiving now.

“Let’s do this.”

+

Cooking with Joe and Nicky is something Nile has grown to love. She’s not a great cook, but she’s a more than competent sous chef, having spent countless hours in the kitchen helping her mother: chopping vegetables or boiling water or washing rice or taking a dish out of the oven when the timer went off… anything to help her mom juggle two jobs and two kids and a house full of grief and work.

Nicky is the real cook, and he sets them both to work. He’s taken to Thanksgiving dinner with the single-minded focus he brings to a mission where he’s watching their backs through the scope of a sniper rifle. Or the focus he brings to Joe, when he’s badly hurt and slow to heal: he’s focused and capable.

He took it upon himself to sharpen all their knives, and they’re wickedly sharp, Nile finds, as she’s helping Joe quarter a small mountain of brussels sprouts. Nicky looks up when she hisses, and he takes her hand, inspecting her finger carefully as the cut scabs and heals in a second and a half.

“Be careful,” he admonishes her.

It feels how it used to feel, cooking in a small kitchen with her family, cracking jokes with her brother behind her mother’s back. It’s nice.

After the brussels sprouts have roasted with shallots and butter, they roast yams, and Nicky sets Joe to kneading dough for dinner rolls, and Nile to rubbing butter into flour for pie crust.

There isn’t a lot of room in the kitchen so they get in each other’s way, banging elbows and stepping on each other’s feet, and the kitchen fills with a multitude of languages as Nicky critiques Joe’s kneading technique in Italian, and Joe snarks back at him in Arabic, and what sounds like Catalan. Beneath it all, there’s the low thump and rhyme of A Tribe Called Quest, and Nile occasionally stops both Joe and Nicky up because they’ve got to hear this one verse, really, just shut up for a second.

It gets warm in the kitchen as they cook, and Andy makes a rare appearance for a few minutes to watch them from the doorway and then step into the mess and lean over the pan Nicky is stirring, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten pumpkin pie,” she tells Nile, who is whisking pumpkin puree and spices and cream together in a bowl. 

“Never?” Nile asks, raising her eyebrows.

“Never,” Andy says. “You’d think after a while that I’d have eaten everything there was to eat. But they keep inventing new things to try.”

“It’s delicious,” Nile tells her. “You’ll like it.”

“I once spent half a year at sea eating hard tack with maggots in it,” Andy tells her, and Nile makes a face. “Anything without bugs in it sounds great.”

“That’s disgusting,” Nile yells after her when she leaves the kitchen, then turns back to the pie crust she’s rolling out.

Side by side with Joe, she rolls out crust for two pies, blind bakes them, and fills one with spiced pumpkin filling, and the other with a sugary filling, and concentric rings of candied pecans on the top. Joe kneads and shapes close to a dozen rolls, then helps Nicky chop and roast root vegetables, and sauté collard greens with a little garlic and slivers of almond, the way Nile’s mom did, when they were trying to be fancy for the holidays.

When the rolls have risen, and the pies are cooling, he bakes them, and the sweet, spiced smell in the kitchen mellows into something homey and comforting, the scent of rising yeast and fresh bread.

The whole process takes hours, and Nile’s whole body is sore by the time they finish. They’ve still got hours more work – they haven’t even touched the turkey – but the fridge is full of food, and Nile can feel excitement thrumming in her bones beneath her exhaustion. 

When the last of the rolls comes out of the oven, Joe steals Nile’s phone. He holds it above her head when she grabs for it, grinning at her the way her brother used to, and she sighs expansively and lets him keep it.

He taps for a long time, scrolling around until he finds what he’s looking for, asking Nicky questions in what sounds like French as he searches for something.

“No, no,” Nicky says. “It was in Salzburg. Mozart, perhaps?”

“The suspense is killing me,” Nile deadpans. Then: “Wait, I’m sorry, did you know Mozart?”

“Nicky heard him play once, in the imperial court at Vienna,” Joe says absently.

“Where were you?” Nile asks, frowning.

“I was not allowed into the court,” Joe says, waving a vague hand at his face and hair. “On account of, you know.”

“Ah,” Nile hums. “The racism.”

“Here it is,” Joe says finally. “[This song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NecLh4YOT9M).” He plays something that makes Nicky smile, slow and sweet. Nile doesn’t really understand classical music, but it’s nice to watch the two of them listen to it. They’re both swaying a little, she realizes, and she pushes one of the kitchen chairs out of the way and hops onto the counter.

“Go on then,” she says, when she’s cleared a little room. Joe looks over at her, and she rolls her eyes. “Ask him to dance. I know you want to.”

At the sink, where he’s drying his hands with a dish towel Nicky goes pink. He sets down the towel when Joe approaches, and laughs softly when Joe sweeps into an elaborate bow.

“You’ll dance with me?” Joe asks, holding out a hand, his fingertips reaching for Nicky’s.

Nicky agrees in a sweet roll of Italian, and it makes Joe glow so brightly Nile has to roll her eyes. Instead, she pulls her legs up onto the counter and wraps her arms around them, interlocking her fingers and holding herself tight.

Joe and Nicky know how to waltz, because of course they do, and they move smoothly throughout the space, Joe’s hand low on Nicky’s back as he steers them away from the various obstacles in the kitchen. He spins Nicky around the chairs Nile’s pushed in tight to the kitchen table, swings their hips so that they miss Nile’s toes and the tray of roasted brussels sprouts which is still sitting out on the counter opposite from where Nile is perched.

As she watches, Joe noses into Nicky’s neck, murmuring, and Nicky lets his eyes slide closed, letting Joe lead him throughout the kitchen with a half-smile, moving together and apart, allowing Joe to spin him away to the end of his arm and then back, all with his eyes closed.

It’s comforting to watch them, Nile thinks, resting her cheek against her tucked up knees. They know each other so well, and they’ve known each other for so long that each step comes with decades, centuries of history. Each is calculated, elegant, strong, and Nile presses her rising smile into a palm.

“Don’t, _don’t_ ,” Nicky says, opening his eyes as the concerto comes to an end and Joe gives him a big, shit-eating grin that makes Nile giggle in anticipation and dips him low. Nicky scrabbles at Joe’s shoulder, and finally kicks him in the shin until Joe stands him upright again. From the counter, Nile applauds, grinning at them both.

“Do you know how to dance, Nile?” Nicky asks.

“Sure,” she says, shrugging. “But not like that.”

“Nicky is a good teacher,” Joe says, nudging her off the counter and picking up her phone. “Let me find you a good song.”

Nile hops off the counter obligingly, and Nicky smiles warmly at her, holding out a hand. He cocks a head at [the music Joe chooses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTYymbbEL4), something more lively than what he and Joe had danced to, and lifts Nile’s hand to his shoulder.

“Like this,” he says. “Your right foot back, then the other.” The music swells into something familiar, and when she’s got the basic steps down, he counts them off, and leads her in slow circles through the kitchen, smiling and stopping whenever she treads on his feet.

“And a twirl,” Joe calls from the counter, and Nicky smiles and obliges, lifting an arm so Nile can twirl beneath it, laughing when the force of her spin whips her braids against his chest. She mimes a curtsey at him when the music ends, and he bows elegantly at the waist, pressing a light kiss to her knuckles.

She grins at him and covers a yawn with one hand.

“Lots to cook tomorrow,” he says, nudging her with a hip. “You should rest.”

“You just want me out of here so you can romance your husband,” Nile gripes at him, and Nicky shrugs easily and doesn’t argue, but bends down for a hug when she wraps her arms around his waist and squeezes briefly. Joe is mostly watching Nicky, but he wraps a warm arm around her shoulders and pats her head obnoxiously when she leans into him for a hug, and Nile leaves them to it.

She washes her face and reaches for her noise-cancelling headphones when classical music starts up again in the kitchen. She realizes, belatedly, that she left her phone in Joe’s hands, and chances a glance into the kitchen to see if she’ll be able to get it back.

Joe has pushed the kitchen table out of the way to give them more room to dance. Nicky is leading this time, but they’re barely moving, just rocking back and forth and talking softly, focused entirely on each other.

It makes Nile’s heart feel a little sore, to see them so close, but that sore feeling is a good feeling tucked over the contours of the sad feeling. She’s glad, and fiercely grateful to have lived long enough to see this kind of love first person, and she tucks her headphones over her ears and sneaks back to her room.

+

The next morning is lazy and slow, the way most Thanksgivings were at home. For breakfast, they toast the dinner rolls that Joe made the night before and slather them with jam, and then Joe goes off with Andy to do something in the city. Something for Copley that gets them out of the safe house and leaves Nicky and Nile alone with a turkey carcass, a mountain of potatoes, and the Velveeta cheese Nile had bought for mac n’ cheese.

“We should do the turkey first,” Nicky says. “It needs hours in the oven.”

“Right.” Nile says. “Absolutely. For sure.” Neither of them move.

The turkey they’d bought from Costco was massive, far too large for their motley crew of four, and Nile will be the first to admit that she’s intimidated by the complicated nature of actually roasting the damn thing. 

“Okay,” she says finally, setting her jaw. “We can do this. Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose.”

Nicky nods at her solemnly, the way he does when she makes a reference he doesn’t understand.

“You get the stuffing, I’ll get the turkey.”

They do get it done, in the end, stuffed and trussed up, and in the oven. She’d rubbed a jar of mayonnaise all over it because her mom used to do that to keep the meat moist, ignoring Nicky’s judging eyebrows. They’d bought brioche for the stuffing, and torn it into pieces by hand, mixing it with garlic and mushrooms and shallots, and stuffing the lot of it inside the bird.

Nile starts the macaroni and cheese while Nicky makes a roux for the gravy, frowning over a pan of butter and flour, bending down occasionally to sniff at it as it browns and thickens. At his side, Nile boils water and cooks the pasta until it’s al dente and grates cheese into a big bowl, then adds everything together with milk and melted butter and even more cheese.

Nicky helps her with the bechamel, stirring and grating fresh nutmeg into the mix, stirring and stirring carefully.

“This was my mom’s specialty,” she tells Nicky as they put the casserole dish into the oven. “She put hamburger in it sometimes.” She doesn’t need to look at his face to know he’s working very hard at not having an expression. “It’s okay, I know you think it’s weird. But it was great. She always made it taste great.” 

Joe and Andy poke their noses into the proceedings as the turkey cooks, and Nicky bullies them into carrying the kitchen table into the living room, and setting it with matching plates and glasses. Andy unearths some squares of clean cloth and folds them into neat triangles, tucking them beneath the cutlery, and then disappears and returns with a dozen votive candles.

As the day ticks over into the afternoon, things start to come out of the oven, and both Joe and Andy have to be chased away from stealing bites. Nile steps back at one point, all the way across the kitchen, and stands with her hands on her hips, surveying what they’ve done.

There are dinner rolls squeezed beside two pies – pumpkin and pecan; a bowl of cranberry sauce spiced with cardamom and cinnamon; collard greens studded with crisped bacon and garlic and slivered nuts. In the oven, Nile knows that her mom’s mac and cheese is bubbling alongside the stuffing and turkey.

The air is warm and thick with good smells: the kitchen windows are steamed, and the table is set. It gets dark early in Canada, and the sun is already sinking down towards the horizon.

Nile and Joe carry the plates of food to the table, bumping elbows as they try to fit the plates in between each other. Joe grins at her, sunny and bright, elbowing her in the side on purpose when they manage it, and he drapes a warm and heavy arm around her shoulders as Nicky and Andy bring in a few bottles of wine (and one of whiskey) and fit them in among the plates.

“You did good,” Joe whispers in her ear as he hugs her to his side. “Nile, you did great.”

Nile takes a deep breath, a shaky one, that she holds in her chest, and nods.

Everyone sits down, eventually, and there’s a space of silence and quiet when they’re all seated. Nile thinks briefly about her home, and her mother and her brother, the noise and the food, then squashes those thoughts with brutal efficiency. The way she used to during basic training and in Afghanistan when she was so homesick she couldn’t sleep.

She opens her mouth to tell them to dig in, to fill the silence with the noise of plates and cutlery and conversation, so she can rewrite her old memories with new ones, but Nicky gets there first.

“Do we say what we’re thankful for now?” He asks, tentatively, from the other side of the table. “I made a list.”

Nile stands up from the table, knocking her chair over as she goes. “I need.” She says, and takes a breath. “Hot sauce. One second.”

Joe finds her in the kitchen five minutes later, and doesn’t say anything, just runs a dish towel under the faucet and folds it neatly for her and hands it over. She presses it gratefully against her stinging eyes and leans back against the fridge, trying to keep her breaths steady. Joe gives her time, and when she straightens a little bit, he’s there, with a warm hand against her arm that he doesn’t replace when she knocks it away reflexively. 

“I’m going to have my shit together by Christmas,” she tells him eventually, when she can take the towel off of her eyes. “Probably.”

“I didn’t have my shit together until nearly two decades after I met Nicky,” Joe says easily. “There’s no rush.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Nile says, with feeling. “Fuck. Okay.” She pushes herself off the fridge, and presses the heels of her hands under her eyes, pressing hard against any new tears.

“Did you want hot sauce?” Joe asks, and she giggles a little hysterically he pulls a bottle of sriracha from the fridge.

Nicky’s turned on music by the time they get back to the table, more classical music, and Nile takes her seat and folds her hands tight around the towel Joe had given her. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s have some turkey.”

She feels better as the plates are passed around the table, and there’s the comforting Thanksgiving familiarity of hands reaching under and over one another. She fills her plate with turkey and potatoes and collards and cranberry sauce and gravy and a big serving of mac and cheese. Nicky puts two dinner rolls on her plate, and Andy adds another serving of turkey to her plate when she’s not looking, and Joe nudges the dish of butter and jam her way as she splits open her dinner rolls.

Conversation ebbs and flows around the table as they eat, and by the time they get to dessert, Nile is feeling warm and full, and happy. Nicky brings the pies out, and the whipped cream – hand whipped and flavored with a touch of vanilla, though she’d tucked a bottle of Coolwhip in the back of the fridge – and cuts them into slivers, and Nile says:

“We can say the things we’re thankful for now, if you want. I can… I can go first,” she says, looking at her fork. 

“I’m grateful for my mom. She’s just,” she smiles, and pushes the tines of her fork through the puddle of whipped cream on her plate. “She’s like, the baddest. She kept us all afloat, through all sorts of things. She literally made lemonade out of lemons, every day of her life, two four seven, three six five.”

She takes a breath, and thinks back on what she said. “She makes lemonade, I mean. She still makes it,” she inhales, and blinks fiercely down at her plate when her breath catches painfully in her throat. “I’m sure she still does.

Beneath the table, Joe nudges his knee into hers, and Nicky clears his throat. “I’m grateful for Joe,” he says, and Andy rolls her eyes, and kicks her chair back onto two legs, performatively exasperated, for Nile’s sake.

“What I mean to say,” Nicky says, smiling. “Is that I’m grateful that to have found love and light in the face of war and darkness. And I am grateful to you, Nile, for teaching us so much. And to you, Andy.” He says something in Italian that Nile doesn’t follow, but that Andy clearly does, if her fond eye roll is anything to go by.

“I’m thankful that we are all alive on this same day, in this same place,” Joe says. “I am grateful to never forget what a miracle this life is.”

At the other end of the table from Nile, Andy is quiet for a long moment, and then gestures around the table. “I’m grateful for this,” she says. “I’m grateful I’m able to share this life with all of you.”

\+ 


End file.
